Reading the Book of Nature

Frontmatter Page 1 Wednesday, April 15, 2009 3:01 PM Reading the Book of Nature Frontmatter Page 2 Wednesday, April 15, 2009 3:01 PM Habent sua fata libelli Volume 41 of Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies Raymond A. Mentzer, General Editor Composed by Thomas Jefferson University Press at Truman State University, Kirksville, Missouri 63501 Cover Art and Title Page by Teresa Wheeler, TSU Designer Manufactured by Edwards Brothers, Ann Arbor, Michigan Body text is set in Galliard Old Style by Carter & Cone, 10/13 Frontmatter Page 4 Wednesday, April 15, 2009 3:01 PM Copyright © 1998 Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America This book has been brought to publication with the generous support of Truman State University, Kirksville, Missouri Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Reading the book of nature : the other side of the Scientific Revolution / Debus, Allen G., and Michael T. Walton, eds. p. cm. — (Sixteenth century essays and studies : v. 41) “The present volume is composed of papers read at a series of sessions centered on the history of renaissance and early modern science and medicine held in St. Louis at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference 24–27 October 1996”–Pref. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-940474-47-6 (alk. paper; casebound) ISBN 0-940474-48-4 (alk. paper; paperback) 1. Medicine–History–16th century–Congresses. 2. Alchemy–History– 16th century–Congresses. 3. Science–History–16th century–Congresses. I. Debus, Allen G. II. Walton, Michael Thomson, 1945– . III. Sixteenth Century Studies Conference (1996, St. Louis, Mo.) IV. Series. R146.R43 1997 509'.031–DC21 97–33101 CIP No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any format by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any informa- tion storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper in this publication meets or exceeds the minimum requirements of the American National Standard—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48 (1984). ScientificbkTOC Page 5 Wednesday, April 15, 2009 3:01 PM CONTENTS Preface vii Michael T. Walton Genesis and Chemistry in the Sixteenth Century 1 Jole Shackelford Seeds with a Mechanical Purpose: Severinus’ Semina and Seventeenth- Century Matter Theory 15 Charles D. Gunnoe, Jr. Erastus and Patracelsianism: Theological Motifs in Thomas Erastus’ Rejection of Paracelsian Natural Philosophy 45 Bruce T. Moran Libavius the Paracelsian? Monstrous Novelties, Institutions, and the Norms of Social Virtue 67 William R. Newman Alchemical and Baconian Views on the Art-Nature Division 81 Stephen A. McKnight The Wisdom of the Ancients and Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis 91 Nicholas H. Clulee John Dee and the Paracelsians 111 Ana Maria Alfonso-Goldfarb An “Older” View about Matter in John Wilkins’ “Modern” Mathematical Magick 133 Allen G. Debus Paracelsus and the Delayed Scientific Revolution in Spain: A Legacy of Philip II 147 ScientificbkTOC Page 6 Wednesday, April 15, 2009 3:01 PM Reading the Book of Nature Martha Baldwin Danish Medicines for the Danes and the Defense of Indigenous Medicines 163 Lawrence M. Principe Diversity in Alchemy: The Case of Gaston “Claveus” DuClo, a Scholastic Mercurialist Chrysopoeian 181 Thomas Willard The Many Worlds of Jean D’Espagnet 201 Kathleen Wellman Talismans, Incubi, Divination, and the Book of M*: The Bureau d’adresse Confronts the Occult 215 Ursula Klein Nature and Art in Seventeenth-Century French Chemical Textbooks 239 Vera Cecília Machline The Contribution of Laurent Joubert’s Traité du Ris to Sixteenth- Century Physiology of Laughter 251 Contributors 265 Index 268 6 Preface Page 7 Wednesday, April 15, 2009 3:02 PM P|eFACE THE PRESENT VOLUME IS COMPOSED OF PAPERS read at a series of sessions centered on the history of Renaissance and early modern science and medicine held in Saint Louis at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, October 24– 27, 1996. These sessions were organized at the request of Robert V. Schnucker by Allen G. Debus and Michael T. Walton in part to bring together a group of scholars with similar interests from several disciplines and in part to present this work to the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, which traditionally has had relatively few papers on science and medicine at its meetings. The history of science has changed considerably over the course of the past few decades. Forty years ago the emphasis was on the Scientific Revolu- tion of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but interpreted largely on the development of the physics of motion and astronomy from the publication of the De revolutionibus orbium of Copernicus (1543) to the Principia mathematica of Isaac Newton (1687). To a large extent the historian’s task was thought to be a positivistic enterprise in which earlier science was evaluated in relation to modern science. The work of Kepler, Galileo, and other predecessors to New- ton was examined carefully to seek out the “modern” elements of their thought. There was far less interest in the biological sciences, with the excep- tion of William Harvey because of his description of the circulation of the blood in the De motu cordis (1628). The background to his anatomical work was recognized in a series of great Paduan anatomists beginning with Andreas Vesalius (whose monumental De fabrica was also published in 1543) and leading to Hieronymus Fabricius, who taught Harvey as a student. Thus, as the development of classical mechanics was presented as a series of positive steps leading from Copernicus to Newton, the discovery of the circulation of the blood was presented as a “ladder of success” stretching from Vesalius to Har- vey. In short, the Scientific Revolution was presented largely in terms of the mathematicized physical sciences, but with a nod to one development in the biological sciences. As for the history of medicine, there was relatively little interest expressed by historians of science. The founder of the discipline in this century, George Sarton, believed that the biological sciences stood far below 7 Preface Page 8 Wednesday, April 15, 2009 3:02 PM Reading the Book of Nature the mathematical sciences, and he believed that medicine was lower still. Because he was convinced that medicine was a practical art, he was distressed by those medical historians who claimed that medicine is the real foundation of the other sciences. Indeed, he wrote that “the main misunderstandings con- cerning the history of science are due to historians of medicine who have the notion that medicine is the center of science.”1 But what of other areas of interest to scholars interested in the Renais- sance and early modern periods? The research of Lynn Thorndike, Paul Oskar Kristeller, Frances Yates, and Walter Pagel had pointed to the Neoplatonic revival and the prevalence of interest in natural magic, Hermeticism, and alchemy. Sarton felt that these subjects could largely be neglected. He wrote: The historian of science cannot devote much attention to the study of super- stition and magic, that is, of unreason, because this does not help him very much to understand human progress. Magic is essentially unprogressive and conservative; science is essentially progressive; the former goes backward; the latter, forward. We cannot possibly deal with both movements at once except to indicate their constant strife, and even that is not very instructive, because that strife has hardly varied throughout the ages.2 In his very influential The Origins of Modern Science 1300–1800 (1949) Her- bert Butterfield wrote that historians who specialize in alchemy “seem to be under the wrath of God themselves; for like those who write on the Bacon- Shakespeare controversy or on Spanish politics, they seem to become tinc- tured with the kind of lunacy they set out to describe.”3 Even Marie Boas titled the chapter on the mystical natural philosophies of the Renaissance in her The Scientific Renaissance 1450–1630 (1962) “Ravished by Magic.”4 Only in the past thirty years has more attention been given to these subjects due mainly to the work of Dame Frances Yates and Walter Pagel. In par- ticular Pagel’s Paracelsus: An Introduction to Philosophical Medicine in the Era of the Renaissance (1958) proved to be an influential work for those interested in an alternative approach to the period of the Scientific Revolution. Many of the natural magicians and Paracelsians opposed ancient tradition and sought a new observational base for the understanding of nature. While it is true that theirs was not “modern” science, they certainly did contribute to modern 1George Sarton, History of Science: Ancient Science through the Golden Age of Greece (Cam- bridge: Harvard University Press, 1952), xi. 2George Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science, 3 vols. (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1927–1947), 1:19. 3Herbert Butterfield, The Origins of Modern Science 1300–1800 (New York: Macmillan, 1952), 98. 4Marie Boas, The Scientific Renaissance 1450–1630 (New York: Harper, 1962), 166–196. 8 Preface Page 9 Wednesday, April 15, 2009 3:02 PM Preface science because of specific discoveries and concepts, and because of their debates both with the proponents of ancient tradition and with seventeenth- century mechanists. Indeed, they played a significant role in the methodolog- ical debates crucial to the rise of a new science. Here Paracelsus (1493–1541) may be seen as a major figure. A younger contemporary of Copernicus (1473– 1543) and an older contemporary of Vesalius (1514–1564), Paracelsus produced an extensive corpus of writings touching on many topics, among them of spe- cial importance, the joining of chemistry and medicine. He rejected the ancient authors and relied on observational evidence, but he distrusted math- ematics and sought truth in the macrocosm-microcosm analogy. The influ- ence of Paracelsus extended to disciples over a period of more than a century.

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